


Yellow, or: The Fourth Revolution

by Illyria_Lives



Series: Colors [3]
Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Marius is such a little dork I want to squish his cheeks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-17
Updated: 2013-03-17
Packaged: 2017-12-05 13:59:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/724067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Illyria_Lives/pseuds/Illyria_Lives
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It took Marius four tries to finally talk to her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yellow, or: The Fourth Revolution

Marius seemed to be struck by lightning when he let himself into the Musain for their weekly meeting, forty five minutes later than normal, to plan and discuss their upcoming battles with politics and social inequalities. He plopped down in a chair with a faraway look in his eye and a slack jaw just open enough to be noticeably annoying.

"You should shut that," Combeferre said, nodding at his friend, "birds could nest."

"Small birds," Grantaire said to no one in particular. Marius closed his jaw with a creak, eyes still far away. He had forgotten his umbrella and his dark hair was thick with rainwater.

"What's the matter with you?" Enjolras asked, pausing his arrangement of his notes for that meeting, a whole side of the large table taken up by flyers and printouts of news articles that he thought they would find interesting.

For a response, Marius gave a smile that they had never seen on him before.

"Oh my god," Grantaire said into the shocked silence while Courfeyrac made the sign of the cross, "we're so fucked. He's  _smitten._ " Marius made an unholy noise, leaning his chin onto one hand.

"Either get him out of here before Jehan shows up or wipe the smile from his face," Enjolras ordered, "we don't want a repeat performance of Bahorel and the barista." They all shuddered at the memory.

Courfeyrac volunteered to go with Marius to defuse him, and Combeferre lost a quick and hurried game of Roshambo with Grantaire while Enjolras's back was turned to wave to a dark-haired girl from his Government class, who tended to hover nearby during meetings unless invited to sit with them.

"You don't even want to be here," Combeferre hissed to Grantaire as he gathered his things.

"You don't even know how to play rock-paper-scissors," the already buzzed young man snapped in response, leaning his chair back luxuriously. Combeferre pushed his glasses up his nose and lead Marius and Courfeyrac to his car with a barely repressed sigh, brushing past Bahorel and Feuilly as they entered the café. Approaching the now diminished table, waiting for only Joly, Bossuet, and Jehan, Bahorel jerked one thumb over his shoulder, to the door swinging closed behind the banished trio.

"What was that about?" he asked, dragging out his chair and giving Eponine, now sitting with them, a friendly nod.

"Barista," was all Enjolras said, and the color drained from Bahorel's face.

"A quick prayer," Grantaire ground out sarcastically as Feuilly started to tell Eponine what exactly the fuck was going on, "Dear Lord, spare us from the powers of Jean Prouvaire to take no bullshit in the face of budding romance. Let him remain oblivious for as long as possible. Praise Jesus, amen."

"Amen," Bahorel replied. "I need a fucking drink."

* * *

At Combeferre and Enjolras's empty apartment, Marius was forced to sit on a kitchen chair and face an inquisition of two undergraduates with crossed and judgmental arms.

"Listen to me, Pontmercy. I am your voice of reason."

Marius blinked in confusion before pointing at Combeferre. "No, he's my voice of reason."

Courfeyrac feigned injury. "That cuts me deep, roomie... roomie! That's it! I'm your roommate; therefore I have a voting share in your love life." He looked down at the sitting Marius smugly.

"Then shouldn't Jehan be here?" Marius asked in confusion as Combeferre repressed a smirk, "He's my roommate too."

"No!" the two standing young men said at once, shuddering together. "Whatever you do, don't tell Jehan."

"But—"

"Just, don't," Combeferre pressed while Courfeyrac muttered something about baristas.

"Oh, for the love of Christ, just  _talk_ to her," Courfeyrac groaned. "You're killing me here."

"And I'm pretty sure that Jehan would kill you too, if he learned that you were hiding away from a girl you want to date," Combeferre added as Courfeyrac writhed around to show his pain at having an introvert as a roommate.

"I'm not... hiding out," Marius said delicately, red rising in his face, "just... biding my time?"

"Face it," Courfeyrac told him plainly, "on the scale of 'hiding out' you're entrenched deep in the jungles of 'Nam right now. There is no deeper hiding out."

"Hidden in the Himalayas," Combeferre challenged with a grin.

"At the bottom of the Atlantic," Courfeyrac shot back.

"Encamped in the middle of the Sahara."

As their voices got higher and higher ("Being Dr. Livingston!" "In Mordor!"), Marius snuck out headed down to the bookstore around the corner from the Musain. If he was lucky, she would be there.

She wasn't.

Earlier that day, she had walked out shortly after he had.

* * *

**Courf** : fuck it m y did u sneak out

 **Courf** : m

 **Courf** : marius

 **Courf** : i assume that since ur not answrin that ur gettin laid

 **Courf** : congrats

 **Joly** : Um, wrong number Courf. Sorry.

 **Courf** : fuckin b changed my contacts AGAIN

 **Courf** : gonna have WORDS w/ him l8r

 **Joly** : What about Marius getting laid?

 **Courf** : boy is twitterpatted so hard

 **Courf:** str8 outta a disney movie i s2g

 **Joly:** Does Jehan know?

 **Courf:** ok look doc

 **Courf:**  if j gets wind of this

 **Courf:** then everybody

 **Courf:** not justm

 **Courf:** is fucked so hard we gonna b walkin funny 4 a week

 **Courf:** u get me?

 **Joly:** Dear God Bahorel wasn't kidding about your texting

 **Courf** : :p

* * *

There was a small bookshop a few blocks away from the Musain that Marius always walked by on his way to meet his friends. He never went inside, let alone looked through the windows, since he was usually late to the meetings and going along at a clipped speed to try and make it there before Courfeyrac, who would usually place an order for him of something obscenely fruity and not at all coffee-related.

But today he had gotten a text from Enjolras halfway through his walk that the meeting would be postponed for forty-five minutes because he, Combeferre, Courfeyrac and Bahorel were all trapped in an extended lecture that they couldn't leave. So that day, as he strolled leisurely past the bookshop, he figured that a look around inside was a perfect way to waste half an hour.

He didn't know how right he was.

He had wandered into the poetry section for no reason, expecting to see Jehan camped out in the waist-high aisles, when a bell went off as the door swung open. By instinct rather than interest, he looked up and felt the floor drop away beneath him.

A young woman his age stood in the doorway, shaking off her wet umbrella—rain had begun to fall while Marius had pointlessly perused the books—and propped it against the door. She swept a knit hat off of her head and let soft curls of golden yellow hair cascade down almost to her waist. With eyes that shone out like stars, she looked and Marius and he experienced a small heart attack.

He quickly forced himself to walk on stiff legs to another part of the bookshop, waited long enough for her to be gone from the doorway, and then rushed out into the downpour to make his way into the Musain. Not five minutes later he was being bustled out again.

"What happened between Bahorel and the barista?" he asked in a faraway voice as Combeferre drove him and Courfeyrac to his apartment.

"Don't ask," they both said, and Marius didn't even make a sound in response, too busy dreaming of a girl with sunlight for hair to notice.

* * *

After he escaped from Combeferre and Courfeyrac (ignoring the latter's attempts to call, text, and message him), he stood in the poetry section of the bookshop for two hours, and she didn't show up again.

* * *

The next day he approached the bookshop just in time to watch her leaving, hair tucked away but her umbrella easily recognizable. She walked away with her head low and her feet heavy, and he was gripped with the insatiable urge to run to her, pull her close, and make everything okay.

Luckily for him and his arrest record, he repressed the urge and trudged back the way he came.

* * *

"You have got to be fucking with me," Bahorel told him in their math class the next day. "Just ask her out next time you see her!"

"I can't; I don't know a thing about her!"

"Then why do you want to ask her out?" Bahorel asked bluntly. Marius pointedly stood up and moved seats.

* * *

He couldn't explain it; couldn't articulate how the softness of her eyes (which he saw almost daily now; she went to the bookstore the same time every day, and he was normally there already in wait for her, leaving soon after her) were like nothing he had ever seen before; how her finely sculpted hands handled the books she never seemed to buy were something from a dream. He never found the words to describe the impossible yellowness of her hair, a shade that permeated into his dreams.

He dreamt of her hair and woke up with his mouth empty for a name. He would get ready, go to classes, and then arrive at the bookstore just in time to watch her enter and do her daily ritual—tap water off of umbrella, uncap hair, look around the room (look over where Marius was pretending to inspect a book of Yeats) and then head to the biography section, on the opposite side of the shop. And then, after around an hour, he would force himself to leave, cheeks burning into the onslaught of rain that did not cease.

He never saw how she watched him go with disappointment and regret.

* * *

Marius was never good at talking to new people. He tried to talk to her three times, making a strangled noise in her direction as they stood in the same aisle at the bookshop, and then quickly made his exit into the rainstorm as she watched after him with a dying hopeful expression the first time. The second time it was as she brushed past him to leave; he reached out one hand halfway to her, opened his mouth, and then closed it with an audible clack that had her looking over her shoulder at him as he stared holes into the spines of the books in front of him. The third time all he did was look at her and think across everything he would tell her. The sounds pushed at his teeth, and all he could do was mouth them silently.  _My name is Marius Pontmercy and I think I'm more in love with you than is humanly possible._

She looked up, he looked away.

The only way he met people was when they met him first. That was how he met Courfeyrac on the first day of freshman year, and by proxy the rest of his tight knit group of friends. By their second year they were all more or less living with each other, either in the literal sense of Courfeyrac, Jehan, and Marius, and Combeferre and Enjolras, or in the figurative sense of everyone having a spare key to everyone else's apartments or dorms which they used readily.

Like Marius did three weeks after his infatuation began.

* * *

Enjolras paused in the doorway, his hand still on the knob. "What are you doing here?" he asked Marius, who was glumly sitting on his couch, making sad faces at his open history textbook.

"Jehan stayed at home today and Courf kicked me out," he explained. "And no one will tell me why, or what it has to do with baristas and Bahorel."

"Just the one barista," Enjolras said without further explanation. "Trust me, its better this way. Jehan would read you like a book."

"But I could really use his advice!"

"No you couldn't," Enjolras insisted. "Trust me."

Marius pouted at his book before beginning to speak up. "I'm also not that good with romantic advice," Enjolras said awkwardly, cutting him off. "So, um… don't."

"Are you good at listening at least?" Marius snapped, and Enjolras blinked in surprise at the iron in his voice. He nodded and dropped into his favorite armchair, ignoring the bag of homework he had been dragging inside.

It's a long process, and Marius thinks that Enjolras fell asleep for some of it, but it comes out. As close as Marius can get to the feeling of wholeness he gets by being near her, the urge to know everything about her, to hear her talk and listen to her laugh. But then there were the dark minutes while he explained his fear of reaching out to her, because although he was a romantic he was not a fool, no matter how often the two seemed to go hand in hand. He knew that his fragile painting of her could be shattered in an instant if he got to know her—what if she was nothing like what he thought? What if she rebuffed him, hated him? How comforting would his memories be if she proved to be nothing but a lie? It terrified him and he was not ashamed to admit it. For nearly forty-five minutes he talked without end, finally ending with a sore throat and tired eyes.

Enjolras was not surprised at the strength of the confessions, but at the fact that there were any confessions being made at all. There are some things the at the group did not talk about, ranging on subjects from Grantaire's drinking and the scars on his arms, Bahorel's various tattoos, to Feuilly's current financial situation, but most of all they did not talk about Marius's past. This is as close as Enjolras had ever gotten into Marius's mind. Marius never offered anything up himself, only interjecting the odd opinion on social matters at meetings, never any personal information.

When Marius was done he looked at Enjolras for a long time, who looked like he was deep in thought. Finally, the blond spoke.

"What do you want to do?" he asked.

Marius looked at his hands. "I'm not sure."

"You should think about that," Enjolras said plainly, "before you think about anything else. What do you want to do?"

Marius buried his face in his hands and Enjolras hesitated a bit, uncomfortable with the amount of emotion happening on his couch. "I want to get this barrier out of my head and talk to her," he finally said.

"Okay then," Enjolras nodded. He did not continue on to order Marius to do just that, right then, which Marius was grateful for.

* * *

To date, none of his friends knew anything about his family, other than that He Can't Talk About It. It's not that he doesn't (he will occasionally drop tidbits like "My great-aunt once told me," or "When I was living with my grandfather..."), it's that he actually, physically cannot talk about it. The subject freezes him in place, jaw locked shut and eyes getting misty with a combination of immense sorrow and insurmountable anger. He had, on one occasion where Courfeyrac would not drop the subject, driven the nails of his hands into his palms hard enough to draw a thin line of blood, all while keeping silent to Courf's questions. He then dropped the subject suddenly. Marius's friends were curious, to say the least, but they respect the fact that he just couldn't do it. He couldn't open up the gates that one extra inch, because along with the sad, horrible truth, there was a massive flood of other emotions that will come with it. The guilt, the sorrow, the rage and the fear would come rushing out of him and he wasn't totally sure that he could make it through that with an audience of his friends watching. It's as if in some dark back corner of his mind he knew that he would drown in the flood.

But she. The way she looked at him as he watched from the corner of his eye, he thought that perhaps she could stem the flood, be his lifeboat on the thrashing seas. He had the hope cradled in the recesses of his chest that if he whispered his secrets into the skin of her neck or her shoulder that she could keep them safe from the light, trapped between his lips and her pulse as he kissed the line of her jaw. She was the safest place that Marius had ever seen, and it terrified him.

It terrified him into a silence that was slowly constricting around him, suffocating him.

And it finally reached the point, four weeks-and three failed attempts to speak-into his one-sided love affair, where talking at Enjolras, stuttering at Courfeyrac, and avoiding Jehan for unknown reasons could not help at all. There was only one thing he could do, and only one person he knew wouldn't think worse of him, or, God forbid, try and offer useless advice when he did it.

* * *

**R** : hey courf your bfriend is crying on my couch

 **R** : come collect him or i will kick his skinny ass to the curb

 **Courf** : no u wont

 **Courf** : ur probly the only 1 of all us who wont do that

 **R** : whatever

 **R** : come get him anyway

 **Courf** : omw

* * *

Grantaire's apartment was a cheap single in an area of town that only the drug addicted or the dying chose to live in, with houses and apartments meant for bigger and better people but because of the credit crunch had to make do with only part-time employed and all-time drunk college students. When Courfeyrac knocked on the familiar ground-level apartment, Grantaire opened the door with a bottle of beer in one hand in a facial expression bordering on hysteria.

"Why is he even  _here_?" he demanded of Courfeyrac as he led the way to the living space of his small, dingy apartment. "I thought he was  _your_  lost puppy."

"Because you're the only one who wouldn't kick him out or give him advice," Courfeyrac stated. "And that's not what he needs right now." He winced when he saw the state Marius was in, curled up on Grantaire's second hand couch with his face pressed into one corner, shoulders shaking. He had tried, he had really truly tried to help, but his advice towards Marius in the past weeks had never gone beyond telling him to Just Do It.

"I don't even know how to deal with this," Grantaire said, although his voice was soft. He could jump back from the gates of hell when it was him, sobbing hysterically into the scruffy pillows on his couch, but when faced with someone else all he wanted was a drink.

"Sorry," Marius gasped, taking in huge shuddering breaths and pinching the bridge of his nose. He sat up slowly. "Sorry," he said again, and Grantaire sighed, dropping to sit next to him on the couch.

"No problem," he said briefly, and then stood up again. "I'm making coffee," he said to no one in particular, and then went into his kitchen to make loud coffee noises.

"You okay?" Courfeyrac asked softly.

Marius tried to nod, but couldn't, making a strangled noise.

"Panic attack?" Courfeyrac asked delicately. "Or are they anxiety attacks? I forget which is which."

"Me too," Marius said quietly, rubbing at his face. "I can't take this stress anymore, Courf. I just—" he made a noise and stuck his face into the corner again.

Courfeyrac looked at him for a long minute before going to the kitchen to find Grantaire with a steaming mug of coffee in his hands that by all the laws of physics and nature he should not have had that quickly. Touching a finger to his lips, Courfeyrac took the mug and dropped something from his pocket it in before leaving to present it to Marius with the stern order to drink up.

Marius was asleep before he had even finished his cup. With a relieved sigh Courfeyrac collapsed into a battered folding chair in Grantaire's kitchen, where the older man was sitting, nursing a new beer and a battered sketchbook that he set aside when Courfeyrac entered the room. He craned his head to look over the faux wood bar partition and made a noise that Courfeyrac didn't care to translate.

"What did you give him?" Grantaire sounded a strange mix of impressed and horrified. "You know what? I don't want to know. Guilt by association."

"At least he's stopped crying now?" Courfeyrac offered.

Grantaire muttered something like "small blessings" into the mouth of his bottle. Then he spoke up. "What are you going to tell him when he wakes up?"

Courfeyrac shrugged and made a helpless sound.

"Because you know he can't go to anyone else," Grantaire pressed. "Jehan goes without saying. Joly, Bossuet, 'Chetta? They're all as normal as fuck romantically speaking—except for the polyromantic thing. Bahorel doesn't get any emotions that don't come with a bloody nose, Combeferre has his strange quasi-asexual thing that I think is just laziness, Feuilly doesn't know him all that well, and Enjolras…" he chuckled after swallowing heavily. "We don't need to talk about all the reasons why Enjolras is a bad choice for Marius, here."

"You could talk to him," Courfeyrac pointed out, "You're both…"

Grantaire's eyes dared him to continue the sentence, while his mouth begged for him to stop. Courfeyrac sighed. "Okay. I'll talk to him."

"Good." Grantaire stood and drained his beer, slinging a camera with a strap over his shoulder. "Now, I have work to do. Please don't be here when I get back." It's not an unkind suggestion.

"Love you too, R!" Courfeyrac called out after him, and smiled as Grantaire let out a loud bark of a laugh in the hallway before his steps retreated.

* * *

Courfeyrac was sitting on the small balcony to one side of the living room when Marius woke up slowly, blinking and confused as to where he was and why it smelled like whiskey. Courfeyrac didn't call out to him, only continued to watch the sunset over the tall industrial buildings. The balcony wasn't so much a balcony as a bricked-in narrow patio that only had enough room for two plastic lawn chairs and a full ashtray.

Marius came over to sit next to him in silence. Courfeyrac, for once, didn't press him to speak. Finally, after a few long minutes, Marius spoke.

"How do you do it?" he asked quietly, "Let people in like you do."

Courfeyrac shrugged before leaning in to talk in a low tone. "A word of advice, Pontmercy: if you let people in like I do, fast and furious and brief, then... well, it's like leaving the door open. They just walk right on out afterwards." Marius pictured a door swinging closed, with Her on the other side. All the light is gone, snuffed out in an instant, and his heart let out a weak thump. He groaned and leaned his forehead into his knees, feeling Courfeyrac rest his hand on his back for a moment before speaking up again.

"So get your big boy pants on, Marius," he slapped his back harshly, and Marius glared up at him from his hunched position, "and talk to that girl, before she walks out."

Marius sighed before finding a small smile. "Okay, Courf. Tomorrow, I'll do it. I'll really do it." It is not just a promise to Courfeyrac, but to himself. If he went one more day without talking to her, he didn't know what he would do with himself.

"Good," Courfeyrac replied, standing and stretching before swinging his legs over the brick barrier and landing on the narrow road that curved towards the back parking lot of the building. As he walked away, he called out loudly over his shoulder, "God above knows how badly you need to get laid!"

"You're a dick sometimes, you know that?" Marius called out in reply. Courfeyrac laughed along the wind and raised a hand over his shoulder in recognition. Marius watched him walk away.

 _Tomorrow, I'll do it._ _Fourth time is the charm, right?_

_Right._

* * *

Marius was at the book shop before she was, hovering around the poetry section, occasionally taking a book off the shelf and then putting it back in a different spot without looking at it or what it contained. Finally, she entered with a signaling ring of the bell, looking around quickly, hair a bit askew and breath coming in and out hurriedly. Marius looked away as her eyes passed over him, glancing up only as she went to her usual spot by the biographies with something like a relieved expression.

 _Put on your big boy pants,_  Marius told himself, imitating Courfeyrac's slight Irish accent.  _Walk over, say "hey" and don't look like an idiot._

He turned away from the poetry books quickly, managed to catch himself as he stumbled, and then walked even faster towards her. She was walking towards him too, with her hands clenched a bit. She was focusing on her feet, mouthing something to herself that Marius couldn't detect. As they got closer and closer he thought he heard her whisper, "talk to him talk to him talk to him don't look like a freak" and then he realized that only reason he could hear her was because he was about to run into her.

As romantic as it might have seemed in the movies, running smack into someone at fast walking speed actually hurt a  _lot_.

"Ouch," Marius said, clutching at his nose. " _Ouch_."

"Ow," She rubbed at her head, fingers disturbing yellow locks. "Um." She looked at him. He looked at her, sprawled on the ground across from her.

"Here—"

"Let me—"

"Help—"

They both offered hands to stand up and then stood up without help, and ended up standing holding hands. He released her just as quickly as she released him. They stood apart, looking anywhere but at each other, faces red.

He dared to look at her. She was looking at him at the same moment from beneath a fringe of yellow hair. He opened his mouth to speak just as she opened hers.

Both waited for the other to speak.

He didn't know when his face broke into a smile; but he watched as she did the same, again beginning to speak at the same time as he did, and cutting herself off in tandem with him. He began to laugh, and her musical giggle rose with it until he was hunched over, in stitches, because wouldn't luck have it that his angel had been waiting for him as well?

"I'm Marius Pontmercy," he eventually greeted her, after they had been glared onto the sidewalk outside the bookshop from the racket they were making. All awkwardness was gone, leaving behind only a mutual, glowing warmth.

"I'm Cosette," she said, her voice bringing the beating of his heart higher. "It's nice to meet you." She held out her hand.

He took it. "It's nice to meet you too." Truer words, he thought, he had never spoken.

The clouds parted and the sun came down around them in a bright shower, the constant rain gone at last. It was the golden moment to end all golden moments, or at least it seemed to be so, until it was made pale in comparison when Cosette spoke up again:

"Would you like to go out sometime and grab a coffee?"

He couldn't say yes fast enough.

* * *

**Courf** : yo so r u good or r u sad

 **Marius** : I'm great :)

 **Courf** : slow claps 4 u

 **Courf** : tears runnin down my face

 **Courf:**  i b praisin up the lord something fierce

 **Marius** : Shut up?

 **Courf** : haha yeah sure whatevs

 **Courf** : congrats bro

 **Marius** : Thanks :)

* * *

The coffee was good.

The shy, almost frightened kiss that Marius brushed onto her cheek afterwards was great.

The kiss she pulled him into afterwards, fingers tangled in the front of his shirt, his hands tangled in her hair, was nothing short of  _utterly amazing._

* * *

**Jehan** : What is this I hear about you getting a lady friend ^w^

 **Marius** : Um

 **Jehan** : I am going to call you and you are going to answer. We romantics have matters of the <3 to discuss.

 **Jehan** : Ooh! I'll write your new beau a sonnet to her beauty! She'll love it, and you can give it to her as a present. I've got such good ideas, huh? :D

 **Jehan** : Haha, I'm getting ahead of myself. Calling you now :3

 **Jehan** : Did you send me to voicemail :l

 **Marius** : No

 **Jehan** : You totally sent me to voicemail

 **Jehan** : You little bitch

 **Marius** : Jehan please

 **Jehan** : You are going to answer the phone the next time I call. I'm writing a sonnet to your new girlfriend and you can't stop me.

 **Marius** : Oh my god

**Author's Note:**

> Baha, this took me a while.  
> Next time: Lavender, or: Bahorel Bangs a Barista


End file.
